The San Diego based VIA Telecom, owned by the Taiwaneese VIA Concern, is to become a member of the Open Handset Alliance, the consortium around the mobile operating system Android.

Whereas the Taiwaneese chip manufacturer VIA is known mainly for its x86 compatible processors, the American subsidary produces chips for the CDMA 3G communication and since 2003 builds complete cell phones.

VIA Telecom was created in 2002 with the takeover of the CDMA section of LSI Logistics by VIA Technologies. Since then, the company has set up branches in Peking, Hangzhou and Taiwan. CDMA is a competing standard for GSM cell mobile networks, in North America the de facto standard, but is also used in Africa and parts of Asia. CDMA itself springs from Qualcomm and is subject to numerous patents.

The new Android version code-named Donut comes with Kernel 2.6.29, more applications and usability improvements. Developers now have more possibilities with the new hardware capabilities of the software development kit (SDK).